Recent advances in technology have led to the popularity of portable electronic devices such as smart phones, tablets, and portable PCs. Different devices vary in size and performance. As a result, consumers generally own more than one of these devices since in certain situations, one device can be preferred over another. The popularity of these devices has led to a rapid growth in the development of applications for these devices. The applications range from productivity applications for banking and news to entertainment applications for social media and entertainment.
Applications installed on a device can periodically receive updates from the application provider. For example, a news application can frequently receive updated content from a news agency. As another example, a banking application can receive updates related to changes to a customer's bank account such as deposits, withdrawals, or new offers. These updates can be presented to the user as a notification on the device.
Due to the nature of notifications, having multiple devices does present some challenges. For example when a user owns multiple devices that each have a copy of an application installed, notifications related to the application can be received and presented on each of the user's devices. A notification which has been reviewed on one device can still be present on another user device. Hence, a significant amount of time and effort is required to review notifications received on the user's devices.